


we slept on the ocean last night

by Origamidragons



Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, Literal Sleeping Together, Nakamaship, Nightmares, Non-Sexual Intimacy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:20:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25612726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Origamidragons/pseuds/Origamidragons
Summary: It starts like this: Luffy can’t sleep alone.(Pirates have nightmares, too. The Strawhats, as always, find a way through.)
Comments: 35
Kudos: 373
Collections: Set Sail One Piece Mid Year Exchange 2020





	we slept on the ocean last night

**Author's Note:**

> And after the world's in bed  
> All the ghosts come sing along  
> But we'll forget them  
> When the morning comes
> 
> And I slept on the ocean last night  
> \- [Along the Road](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv8Rf7jdozQ)

It starts like this: Luffy can’t sleep alone.

Zoro discovers this about six hours after they set out to sea from Shells Town, just the two of them in Luffy’s little dinghy and no destination to speak of. The sun has sunk past the horizon, and the water all around their tiny boat is pitch black, scattered with the shimmering reflections of stars.

Luffy yawns, stretching his jaw open wider than a human’s should rightly be able to go (and maybe the rubber thing still freaks Zoro out just a little bit, okay, he’s working on it) and then, without a word of warning, crawls over to where Zoro’s sitting and drops bonelessly into his lap, sprawling against his chest with his head pillowed over Zoro’s heart.

Zoro goes tense immediately, only _barely_ resisting the instinct to shove him away; in a boat this size, that would definitely send Luffy over the edge, and his new dumbshit captain _can’t swim_. “What. Are you doing.”

Luffy yawns again, and snuggles closer. “Mm. Sleepin’.”

“Okay,” Zoro says, with what he decides is a truly admirable degree of forced calm. “Why _on me_.”

“Comfy,” Luffy mumbles into his shirt. “‘nd warm.”

“Well, get _off_ ,” Zoro says, and then, when there’s absolutely no response, “Luffy? Hey-”

He looks down at Luffy’s face, already slack with sleep and dead to the world, and the rest of the sentence dissolves into a sigh. “...Nevermind.”

Because- see, Zoro’s not a _touchy_ kind of person. It’s probably been more than a year since he was last hugged, and even that was just because Johnny tended to get kind of over-affectionate when he was drunk. Sometimes he shakes hands when handing over a captured pirate for the bounty, and that’s about it. And that’s _fine_.

Luffy’s whole weight is on top of him, warm and heavy and snoring softly against his chest, and Zoro’s pretty sure he can’t even remember the last time he was in this much contact with another person for this long. Luffy’s hair is unwashed and salt-encrusted, and it tickles his chin.

But. Well. It’s not _bad_. It’s definitely _weird_ , and something about it makes Zoro feel oddly warm, but it’s not bad. So he just sighs again, and leans back to look up at the stars, and absently reaches up to rest an arm around Luffy’s shoulders.

He falls asleep a lot faster than usual, that night.

* * *

It goes like this: Nami has nightmares.

She’s good at hiding them. Her sobs are nearly silent, muffled into her pillow and rendered all but inaudible by the doors between her room and the boys’. But Usopp is nothing if not observant- and besides, he doesn’t sleep all that well either. When he closes his eyes he’ll see his mother’s face, too still and too pale with a cloth draped over her kind, sightless eyes. More recently, there have been fresher terrors filling up the inside of his head when he tries to sleep; chief among them Kaya, carved to pieces by Kuro’s claws.

The point is this- when Nami slips out of her room in the middle of the night, her breaths uneven and stuttery from crying, and pads almost soundlessly up to the deck on unsteady feet, Usopp is already awake. He lies still for a minute or two, worrying his lower lip and deliberating on whether to follow her. It’s obvious she’s trying to keep to herself. If it’s something secret, he doesn’t want to bother her. It’s not like he knows that much about her, or about any of them, really.

But at the same time- they’re crew now, right? Even if they’re only been sailing together for a few days. And crew look after each other. Usopp might not have much experience with being a pirate yet, but he _has_ spent years crying into his pillow, so that makes him qualified to deal with this, maybe. He cautiously maneuvers his way out from under Luffy’s arm and tiptoes to the door, careful not to wake his other two crewmates up.

He finds her at the bow, sitting with her back against the railing and her head resting on her knees, shoulders shaking. She startles a little when he steps up onto the deck, jerking her head up and glaring over at him, but her shoulders slump again after a moment.

After another moment of indecision, he sits down next to her. He’s never been good at staying quiet- his mouth has a tendency to open up on its own whenever he’s nervous- but he manages it this time, and just sits there with his arm pressed against hers as she cries.

Once she’s worked herself down to what seems like relative calm again, he offers, “Do you, um. Wanna… talk about it?”

“No,” she says immediately, and then, quieter, “I… no. It’s fine. There’s nothing to talk about.”

It’s one of the most blatant lies he’s ever heard, and he’s been responsible for some _real_ whoppers, but he’d be a hypocrite to point it out. Instead, he says, “Okay, um… do you wanna hear about the time a giant eagle carried me away to its nest, and I had to climb all the way down a tree that was so tall it touched the clouds?”

Nami chokes on a laugh, and it’s an ugly, wet sound, half a sob, but she leans her head against his shoulder, all the remaining tension running out of her body. “Y’know what? Sure. Tell me.”

Usopp’s just reached the part of the story where he finds a whole village of people living in the tree’s roots when he realizes she’s fallen asleep, and he trails off. The ends of her short orange hair poke at his skin, and her cheek is pillowed against his shoulder.

He guesses he’s not moving for the rest of the night, so he carefully wraps an arm around her narrow shoulders and lets his head tip against hers, and closes his eyes.

For once, he doesn’t have any nightmares.

* * *

It goes like this: Sanji doesn’t sleep.

“Oi, dumbass,” Zoro says, leaning against the kitchen doorframe and folding his arms across his chest. “Why are you still awake?”

It’s well into the dead silent hours of night, and even varying as bedtime tends to be on the Going Merry, everyone else is already long since asleep, aside from Usopp, on the lookout in the crow’s nest. It had been a long and tiring day, and most of them had hit the sack immediately after dinner- except for Sanji, who’s still mindlessly moving around the kitchen, like he’s killing time until daybreak.

It’s a measure of how exhausted Sanji must be that he barely even bristles at the insult, only blinks a little and glances over at Zoro. Even with his stupid bangs hiding his face, the sleeplessness is still plain to see in his visible eye. “Hm?” He blinks again, then says, “Oh. It’s you.”

“Why are you still awake?” Zoro asks again, because he still hasn’t got an answer.

“Couldn’t sleep,” Sanji says, and it’s not a lie, but it’s not the whole truth, either. “So I came up here to…” he trails off, makes a vague gesture at the pot bubbling on the stove. “It’s fine. I’m not even tired. I’m used to waking up early, for the breakfast crowd, so.”

There’s a lot of retorts hovering on Zoro’s tongue, but he bites them all back and just says, “Fuck that,” and reaches out and grabs Sanji by the wrist and drags him out of the kitchen without a backwards glance.

“ _Jackass_ , what are you- let _go_ of me- what the _fuck_ , I said I’m _fine_ \- _at least let me turn off the stove_ -” (Zoro does grant that one. Wouldn’t do for the kitchen to burn down.)

He’s probably lucky Sanji is so out of it, he muses as he hauls the cook belowdecks to the sleeping quarters- if not, he probably would have taken at least one bone-shattering kick to the skull by now. But then again, if Sanji wasn’t dead on his feet (and wasn’t a fucking idiot), Zoro wouldn’t be having to do this in the first place. They’ve just entered the most dangerous sea in the world. They _need_ to get their sleep when they can get it so they’ll be ready for trouble when it comes.

As usual, the shared bedroom is piled with pillows and slightly ragged blankets, transforming it into a comfortable little nest. Luffy is sleeping half-propped up against one of the walls, Nami napping with her head on his lap, and Sanji’s cursing goes quiet so as to not wake her up as soon as Zoro tows him inside, which Zoro is grateful for. It was starting to get kind of repetitive.

He drops Sanji down directly next to Luffy, half on top of him, and nods to himself when a rubber arm almost immediately tightens around the cook’s chest, gently but firmly trapping him in place, and the captain snuggles up against Sanji’s side in his sleep.

Sanji glares up at him and hisses, “I hate you,” or tries to, but he interrupts himself in the middle of the sentence with a yawn, which diminishes the impact considerably.

“Yeah, yeah.” Zoro rolls his eyes and then drops down on Sanji’s other side, letting his head flop onto Sanji’s shoulder and letting his eyes slide shut. “Just go to sleep.”

* * *

It goes like this: Robin doesn’t touch people.

It takes a couple days for Chopper to notice, because she _does_ tickle his sides and ruffle his ears, but… she only ever does that with the false hands she creates with her devil fruit, the ones that dissolve into cherry blossoms that tickle his nose. She keeps her real hands close, only touches out of necessity, never when she doesn’t need to, and even then it’s always fleeting.

And she sleeps apart from everyone else, too.

Theoretically, Chopper knows, there’s a boys’ room and a girls’ room. In practice, though, there’s really one room for everybody, and another room where Robin sleeps and Nami changes and keeps her things.

(He asks Zoro, one of the first nights, why Nami often doesn’t sleep in the girls’ room, why the crew instead sleeps all piled up and tangled together when he hasn’t ever heard of humans doing that before. Zoro just shrugs in response. “It’s a comfort,” he says simply. “Won’t air out secrets that aren’t mine, but people don’t become pirates just for fun. Most of us have trouble sleeping.”)

Chopper finds Zoro is right. He likes sleeping together with the others. It’s just easier, when he’s got Luffy’s fingers tangled in his fur and Usopp’s head pillowed on his side, to stop the Doctor’s last words from echoing in his head.

(Luffy also declares him the second-best pillow on the crew, after only Zoro, which absolutely doesn’t make him happy at _all_.)

It happens just after Skypiea, when they’re all still just beginning to recover, sheltered in the sky while they heal from the battle against the mad god. Robin easily concedes when Chopper asks her to come to the sickbay so he can check for lasting damage from the lightning bolt, and lies down on the cot to let him check her ears, her eyes, her heartbeat.

He’s finished his checkup (no apparent lasting problems, miraculously) and is noting down her baselines in his notebook for future reference when he glances up and realizes she’s slipped into slumber, her eyes closed and her breaths slow. It’s not a surprise; they’re all exhausted.

But… maybe it’s because Chopper still doesn’t have _that_ much real experience with humans, but he can’t help but think the way Robin is sleeping doesn’t look all that restful. She’s kind of curled up, her arms folded up against her chest, fingers digging into her forearms tight enough to bruise.

Zoro’s voice rings in his ears. _It’s a comfort. People don’t become pirates just for fun._

He slips down from his stool and shifts into his full reindeer form, and carefully climbs up onto the narrow cot beside her, folding his legs up underneath him and letting his side press against her back. He can feel the miniscule trembles running through her body, tight with tension.

He rests his head on the pillow next to hers and closes his eyes, and slowly, slowly, she stills, relaxing into his side, her tremors calming little by little.

He thinks he hears her murmur something that might be, “Thank you, Doctor-san,” just before he drifts off to sleep, too.

* * *

It goes like this: It’s a comfort.

They’re all hurting after Enies Lobby, all aching and grieving and above all _tired_ , a bone-deep weariness borne of running and fighting and crying and nearly dying over and over again. They can barely stay on their feet for the boat ride back to Water Seven. Robin can’t seem to stop smiling, even through the painful abrasions around her wrists and the tear tracks drying on her cheeks and the ache that digs down to her bones.

Iceberg gives them a whole suite of rooms to use in Galley-La’s temporary headquarters, all comfortable, all with their own big soft beds to sleep in. He means well, she’s certain, but he just doesn’t know how the Strawhat Pirates do things. But, then, there’s nobody else who does things quite like them.

Iceberg is barely out the door before Robin is folding her arms across her chest, ferrying mattresses and bedding and pillows and comforters into the main lounge, gathering them into a piled-up nest of comfort. The shared bedroom on the Going Merry had been outfitted much the same, she remembers, and the warmth of familiarity is the least she can offer them after all they’ve given her.

(Later, Franky will see this, and make a bed big enough to hold all of them, soft and comfortable and warm; but for now, they’re all safe and all alive, and so pillows on the floor are plenty.)

They don’t lie down so much as they all fall together at once in a tangle of limbs and pillows, now that the adrenaline has long since faded away, leaving only exhaustion in its wake. Robin finds herself with her head on Nami’s chest and one of Luffy’s arms slung across her shoulders, and Chopper cuddled against her stomach.

It shouldn’t be as easy as it is to melt into the embrace, to let go of the constant vigilant caution that’s kept her alive for so long, but she _trusts_ these people, like she’s never trusted anyone in her life. She was ready to die for them, and they responded by telling her to live for them instead, and remembering that fills her heart with such soft fondness it nearly hurts.

But they’re not quite all together. Not yet.

She shifts to cross her arms again, careful not to disturb any of the crewmates already fast asleep around and on top of her, and lets an arm blossom from a doorframe in the hall outside to catch Usopp by the collar before he can slip away. She hears his yelp of surprise from just outside the door, quickly muffled, and smiles to herself.

A moment later, he peers inside, hiding behind the mostly-closed door. She meets his eyes and smiles with all the gratitude she can’t begin to put into words, and nods towards an unused mattress and pillow at her side. He hesitates for a moment, clearly uncertain, caught between anxiety and hope, so she takes his hand in a succession of hers and tugs him over. He stumbles, but doesn’t resist, and she can see the exhaustion in him when he practically topples over onto the mattress.

Within minutes, he’s asleep too, face buried in the pillow, snoring softly, one warm hand still clasped in Robin’s. She knows he still has things to work out with Luffy, with the rest of the crew, and there’ll be time for that later. Right now, though, they’re alive, and she’s _free_ , and it’s time to rest.

She falls asleep smiling for the first time in years.

* * *

It goes like this: Luffy can’t sleep alone.

So Rusukaina is… it’s hard. He’s not _alone_ , Rayleigh’s there, and sometimes Hancock and the others visit and let him hug them as long as he wants, and that’s nice, but it’s not the _same_ , not really. He misses his crew, misses Zoro’s solid warmth and the fluffy cushion of Usopp’s hair and the fleecy softness of Chopper’s fur and Robin’s low, rhythmic breathing.

(He’s never slept better than when he was seven, piled together with Ace and Sabo and some ratty stolen blankets on the rough-hewn floor of their treehouse, with the crickets singing outside and the stars shining bright through the window.)

(But now there’s no Ace and Sabo, not ever again, and no crew to keep him warm and chase away the nightmares in their absence, and so he doesn’t sleep well.)

He fights through it, because that’s what he always does, what he’s always done- press through. He has to get stronger for the people he has left.

Going back to the Sunny is nothing less than going home.

When night comes, they’re deep underwater, en route to Fishman Island, the sunlit waters of the surface long since gone. Past the railings of the Sunny, the world is nearly pitch black, lit only by the occasional bioluminescent creature wriggling past.

Luffy couldn’t care less, because right here and right now, the Sunny is the world, and nothing past their bubble of light and warmth and safety matters at all. He grins, and throws his arms out to drag his whole crew together into a messy pile in the middle of the deck- Sanji swears and Chopper shrieks and so does Nami, but not one of them tries to dodge- before flopping into the midst of the chaos himself.

He winds up sprawled half on Brook and half on Sanji, who complains but doesn’t kick him off, his head on Robin’s thigh and his arms tangled through all of them, holding on tight to every member of his crew, the most important treasures in the world, the touch promising him they’re there, _really_ there.

He’s not letting go of any of them, not again, not ever.

He’s reaching the crown with all of them or not at all.

Someone runs a hand through his hair, and it feels nice. Someone says, “Get some sleep, captain. We’ll be here when you wake up.”

He knows they will be.

**Author's Note:**

> AHH i loved writing this so much and i'm so happy to be able to post it now! strawhats cuddle piles is a concept/headcanon very near and dear to my heart and i was _thrilled_ when i realized my giftee had requested feel-good wholesome strawhat slice of life and i could go wild with it. 
> 
> i know franky and brook aren't really there but i promise they're included in the cuddle pile too i just didn't have specific ideas for chapters for them
> 
> the title is from radical face's [along the road](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv8Rf7jdozQ).
> 
> i'm @[oriigami](https://oriigami.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!


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